No sooner had he got off the plane at Otopeni airport in Bucharest than the newspapers were trumpeting the news: "American ambassador is homosexual!"

The fact that the sexual orientation of Michael Guest, America's new ambassador to Romania, triggered such banner headlines, illustrates just how far many Romanians have to go before they accept even the concept of homosexuality, let alone having gay people in their midst.

A nationalist group, the Union of the Romanian Hearth, which claims to protect Romanian values, criticised the appointment as an "affront to Romanian traditions".

In a letter to the daily Ziua, in which he addressed America, the group's head, Ion Coja wrote: "Through tradition and vocation, Romanians have created a society ... and mentality which puts duty and obligations above anything. The supreme duty of any living being is to procreate."

In contrast, most politicians have welcomed the ambassador. They are keen to court the Nato expert who may well speed their entry into the military alliance.

Denouncements on homosexuality could jeopardise Romania's chances of joining the European Union and Nato, and leading politicians have been keen to point this out to heads of the Orthodox church who continue to speak out against such "evils".

Romania was one of the last countries to legalise homosexuality and to - theoretically - end discrimination against gays and lesbians.

In 1994 the country was praised for taking what seemed to be the first step towards establishing a more tolerant attitude towards homosexuality as the constitutional court suspended the communist-era legislation under which homosexual acts were prohibited.

It suggested new legislation should be drafted to bring Romania in line with the recommendations of the European Convention on Human Rights.

But in 1996, parliament adopted an even more draconian law. Even if practised in private, homosexuality was a crime.

Marian Cetiner was the first person to be imprisoned under the new legislation and suffered police brutality and abuse during the two years of a three-year sentence she spent in jail.

She was adopted as one of Amnesty International's prisoners of conscience, and protests were triggered around the world. In London protesters stormed the stage of a production of Aida by the Romanian National Opera, a government-sponsored body. In the Netherlands gay rights protesters jeered the Romanian president.

Since then, as part of a general overhaul of its crime-fighting legislation, Romania has decriminalised homosexuality, adopting the French legal model.

How much the government is just doing this to appease the western clubs it's so desperate to join, and how much the new legislation reflects a new, tolerant society, remains open to examination.

Gay rights activists are not optimistic, but at least admit that if the elected representatives of the country have said it's tolerable, slowly the message might filter down. But you do not change a population's entire system of belief over night. That is evident across the region.

A Sky television crew in Belgrade this spring to cover events as Slobodan Milosevic was sent to the Hague, happened to find themselves in a city square just as gay rights activists were marching through.

As if out of nowhere, a band of thugs descended on the group, knocked them to the ground and started beating up both men and women. The reporter, Tim Marshall, said what appalled him most was not so much the attack as the people sitting in the cafes around the square who laughed and chortled at the spectacle.

In Poland things are only mildly better. The rightwing Solidarity bloc government which enjoyed the overwhelming support of the Catholic church, used to openly denounce homosexuality as an "illness" requiring medical treatment - a view that surveys show is supported by one third of Poles. Towards the end of its governing days, playing that card was also seen as an effective way for the conservatives to boost their flagging popularity.

As a combined result of decades of communism and the influence of the church, only 27% of Poles express tolerance towards gays, while 88% say they don't know anyone who's gay.

In July a survey by the Warsaw-based Lamda lesbian and gay association found that three quarters of Polish homosexuals are unwilling to come out. It also said that gays were not infrequently denied medical attention if they revealed their sexual orientation. It called on the government to introduce legislation to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Whether the two-week-old government, the Alliance of the Democratic Left, will act on this remains to be seen. The message from its central office was simply: "We're looking at some sort of 'don't ask, don't tell policy'." And then the spokesman added quickly: "Of course, we'll quash any legal charges against gays."